Here’s Where You’d (Really) End Up if You Dug Straight Down from St. Cloud

As a kid, I liked to dig.

Whether it was with a shovel in my mom's garden or the sandbox backhoe at the local park, there was just something fun about digging for the sake of seeing how far I could dig. The joke from adults -- and maybe you've heard this before, too -- was always "If you dig too far down you'll end up in China!" As a 10-year old who didn't know his geography all that well, it seemed plausible. As I've gotten older, of course, I've learned that the heat of the earth's core would incinerate me long before I ever reached the other side.

The idea of digging through the earth begs a good question, though -- where would one end up, if it was possible? Where, for instance, would we end up if we started digging a hole straight down from St. Cloud? It's actually not all that difficult to figure out.

The inverse location on the opposite side of the globe (called antipode) would just be the opposite of our current location's longitude and latitude coordinates. The North and South Poles, for example, are perfect antipodes. Fortunately, Antipodesmap.com makes it really easy to figure out St. Cloud's antipode.

Entering St. Cloud, MN as my location, Antipodesmap.com reveals that the place I would come out if I dug straight down would be...

...the middle of the Indian Ocean!

Antipodesmap.com

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Antipodesmap.com

It's actually hard to say which major city would be the closest to our antipode -- maybe Perth, Australia to the east or someplace in South Africa or Madagascar to the west. A couple international bases on Antarctica to the south look even closer still.

Anyways, now you know where you'd really end up if you dug a hole straight down from St. Cloud! Next time your kid's set on digging a hole all the way to the other side of the world, just caution him he'll end up in the Indian Ocean! Or China, whichever seems scarier.